PORTFOLIO Images - Courtesy of Ahmad Mrowat Collection. Writer - Kevin Jones, independent arts writer.
Karimeh Abbud: A legacy The first Palestinian woman photographer On the surface, it’s a stirring success story of a
say for sure who is who? Does one landscape denote
pioneering woman. In 1932 Palestine, against the
Abbud’s eye more than another? What ciphers must
backdrop of the British Mandate, an enterprising
we conjure to ascertain authorship?
young photographer, Karimeh Abbud (1893-1940), placed an ad in Al-Karmil newspaper trumpeting her
Loss, that Palestinian constant, taints this story as well
unique value proposition—“the only national female
as countless others. ‘The Nakba was a catastrophe
photographer in Palestine”—playing at once into the
in every sense of the word,’ confides Reverend Mitri
growing nationalist (read: non-sectarian) label, as well
Raheb, Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
as promoting her gendered agility to photograph
Bethlehem (where Abbud’s father himself was at the
women in their own homes. A canny self-marketer,
spiritual helm for some 50 years), in Mahasen Nasser-
Abbud stamped her postcard-format prints with the
Eldin’s documentary biopic of Abbud, Restored
embossed moniker “Lady Photographer” in both
Pictures (2012). ‘We lost the land,’ he continues.
English and Arabic. Today, she is largely recognized
‘We lost the narrative. And we lost everything that
as the first Palestinian (or Arab) woman to have set
had taken shape and place during the preceding
up her own photographic studio, and to have worked
decades.’
consistently in a field dominated, at the time, by men. Yet this is precisely what Abbud retrieves for us— But it is also a tale of mystery and loss. The archive
an anthology of accumulated life processes that
is enigmatic. This wellspring—from which was
constituted the quotidian in early 20th century
drawn the first comprehensive exhibition of Abbud’s
Palestine. Abbud was not just (inadvertently)
works at Amman’s Darat al-Funun (18 May to 24
documenting some familial inner sanctum, but
Karimeh Abbud, Studio C. Sawides, Haifa, Palestine.
September 2017)—only surfaced in 2006. In that
indeed an entire social class. And beyond: when she
sculpted wooden door complete with hand-shaped
year, an Israeli antiquarian named Boki Boazz, who
ventures out into the world, her images seem almost
knocker. Elsewhere, a pair of stony-faced siblings
had allegedly acquired a collection of some 400
contemporary—of “now,” but somehow glistening
in traditional headgear, a fidgety tomboy freeze-
(mostly) signed photographs from a house in the
with a residue of “then.”
framed in a sculpted armchair, or a dapper youngster
Qatamon neighborhood of Jerusalem, sold his
104 tribe
perched next to a telephone, offer testament to a
stockpile to researcher Ahmad Mrowat, director of
The portraits are as moving as they are revealing.
world of privileged self-consciousness.
the Nazareth Research Project, who folded it into his
Unsurprisingly, children and women abound. A
own fledgling trove.
sage-smiling, black-clad girl, her hand-held doll,
The many women’s portraits provide initial glimpses
floor-bound hobbyhorse and crouching toy dog
of Abbud’s hefty, almost man-like cousin Mateel, a
Yet the archive is contaminated: it contains images by
creating a ludic triangulation, stares at the camera,
photographic fetish threading throughout the entire
Abbud, but also those she collected, or others still,
at once complicit and defiant. A booted young boy,
archive, even into the most experimental hand-color-
of hazy provenance, that lingered in family albums.
wearing a tartan-patterned trench coat and matching
variation works (Abbud tints her cousin’s dress in
How, then, to separate fact from conjecture? Can we
pointed hat, reigns as a mini-maître des lieux before a
peach and turquoise in one series). A single self-
